Kanye West Visits the White House: A Very Short Debate

October 17, 2018

The People v. O.J. Simpson: American Crime Story, FX, 2016

by Eli S. Evans

1

Before white so-called liberals check [1] Kanye for his almost Nietzschean exaltations of Donald Trump, they might want to check their own privilege, wherein lies the very presumption that the minority artists they deem worthy of attention and respect should always affirm their own social and political values, and that something has necessarily gone wrong (“he’s off his meds!”) when they do not.

2

“I’m not black, I’m O.J. Kanye.”

Note:

[1] See Urban Dictionary for the pertinent definition of the word “check”.

“Kanye Visits the White House” is the second in what may or may not be an ongoing series, following no particular schedule, of verybrief commentaries on current events in the United States or possibly other places, written as such in the conviction that while not saying anything at all is a somewhat lousy option, writers should do their best to avoid dignifying historically discredited social and political ideologies with the mannerisms of serious argumentation, and no less so – since outrage seems contributed to and sustains the resurgence of those ideologies – to avoid feeding the outrage machine with lengthy diatribes.

It’s easiest to start from the impulse to problematize the position of the flâneur. The ugly word privilege hovers around it, and we turn to questions that we know the answer to, “Who, exactly, is allowed to wander, like so?”

That Diana and the Amazons speak ‘hundreds’ of languages is believable, given their situation and seeming enlightenment; that English becomes their go-to choice for daily chats off the Greek coast, less so.

On the ancient river, seagull rock crests out of the waters. An outcrop within its sight is thorned by a few young silhouettes, taking turns plunging into the river some feet below. Riverboats and water taxis, white river cruise-ships weave short and cyclical tours between the two shores.